Helen+Noah


 * SUMMARY: Helen Noah, age 34, died in Pittsburgh's Presbyterian Hospital on February 16, 1917 from complications of a self-induced abortion.**

The testimony E. G. Noah gave to the Allegheny County coroner's jury did little to clarify the circumstances surrounding the death of his 34-year-old wife, Helen. He said she'd been “flooding” on Sunday, December 14, 1917 and had gone to Dr. W. J. Connelly, who had prescribed medicine for her. She'd gone back again later and been told that she had “inflammation of the womb.”

On February 3, he said, she'd informed him “that her monthly had just appeared and she had used a catheter to see if they would not appear.”

On February 5, she took to her bed. Connelly came to check on her, and she told him about the catheter. He continued to care for her, finally summoning an ambulance and admitting her to Pittsburgh's Presbyterian Hospital on February 9. There she was treated for massive infection until her death at 2:58 p.m. On February 16.

Evidently the coroner's jury was able to make enough sense of Mr. Noah's testimony to conclude that Helen died of “Puerpueral Septicemia Following Self Inflicted Abortion .”

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].



 For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * Allegheny County Coroner's summary on Case No. 191802-188; [|Coroner Case File]
 * Death certificate



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